


Say Anything (Else)

by enigma731



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, POV Female Character, this is not the story of a love triangle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-28
Updated: 2014-03-28
Packaged: 2018-01-17 07:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1379062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"I got married." Clint glances down at the ring on his hand, the exaggerated nonchalance of the movement telling Natasha that his surprise is feigned. He’s been waiting for her to ask. "Her name is Bobbi, and I'm pretty sure she's the smartest woman I've ever met."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“So you met her three weeks ago,” Natasha says slowly, trying to put the pieces together in her mind, “and you fell in love and you married her in that time, while also working a S.H.I.E.L.D. op?” She can’t quite keep the skepticism out of her voice. </em>
</p><p>In which Clint is a car crash, and Natasha learns what it means to be a supportive partner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Say Anything (Else)

**Author's Note:**

> Let me be clear: This is a story about complicated relationships being complicated. It is not about a love triangle, nor is it intended to fit with 616 continuity and no comics knowledge is required to read this fic. I hope you enjoy this take on one way this arc might play out in MCU. I definitely had fun playing with it.
> 
> Thank you to [andibeth82](http://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82) and [samalander](http://archiveofourown.org/users/samalander/pseuds/samalander) for cheerleading and beta. Thanks also to [SugarFey](http://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarFey/pseuds/SugarFey) for encouragement and thinky thoughts.

Clint misses Natasha’s first anniversary at S.H.I.E.L.D. because he’s on assignment in Las Vegas. She knows because it’s the morning that she makes the 365th mark on the page where she’s been counting the days since she arrived here, determined never to lose another one to the transience of her memory. 

She makes the marks in the notebook that was a gift--she still can’t even think the word without an echo of mild contempt--from the therapist assigned to her, a place where she is supposed to write down her _thoughts_ and _feelings_ about the lost childhood she refuses to mourn. Instead she creates cyphers and uses them to record all the bits of information she learns--that Agents Taylor and Martinez are sleeping together, that Agent Coulson collects Captain America memorabilia, Barton has an embarrassing habit of forgetting to pack underwear on missions, and that Director Hill has a soft spot for cafe mochas. All the inconsequential tidbits that might prove valuable someday, might help her ingratiate herself where needed, or might provide a weak point for her metaphorical blade. She keeps the information locked on pages secreted between her mattress and bedframe, only takes it out when she’s confident that she is alone. Deep down she knows that S.H.I.E.L.D. could still take it from her, could crack her simplistic code and use it to compromise her, but so far they haven’t, and maybe that’s the real point of the whole exercise. 

It isn’t so much that she _minds_ being left behind--she wasn’t crazy about the idea of working with the rather large team assigned to this particular sting at a casino with a rapidly developing reputation for turning out brainwashed patrons. It’s just that having Clint gone is an irritating reminder of the empty spaces that still remain in her life between assignments, how easy it is to retreat back behind her walls of solitude when he isn’t around to break them down, to goad her into training with him, or coming out for a drink when they’re finished. She’s been at S.H.I.E.L.D. long enough that she no longer feels like an exposed nerve in the hallways, no longer sees threats all around her, but she’s still painfully aware that she is not trusted, that she must continue working to make herself valuable, to make herself into a tool Director Fury needs to keep around. 

Clint is gone for a little over three weeks, the longest assignment he’s taken without her since Natasha first let him lead her through the glass doors of headquarters. She doesn’t worry, though, doesn’t even go looking for updated information on his whereabouts until the rest of the team returns without him. He’s listed as ‘on leave’ when she hacks into his file, so she decides that he’s probably stayed behind to screw half the population of Vegas--or at least those who aren’t put off by his lack of underwear--and resolves to put it out of her mind.

* * *

Four days later, she’s picking at some runny eggs in the mess hall when Clint plops a tray loaded with pancakes down across from her before falling into his chair with a soft grunt. 

Natasha looks up at him slowly, raises an eyebrow. “Hello.”

He grins, far too enthusiastically for either the hour or the quality of the food. “Hi. Good morning. Miss me?”

She has, she realizes, far more than is justified by the simple wish to have an ally present at all times, but she isn’t ready to admit that yet, isn’t prepared to give him that sort of collateral. “It was quiet with you gone.”

“You missed me,” he insists, flashing her another crooked grin before tucking into his pancakes.

She notices the ring on his left hand when he picks up his fork and the band catches the fluorescent lights overhead, internally berates herself for not registering it sooner.

“What’s that?” she asks, pointing with her fork.

Clint glances down, the exaggerated nonchalance of the movement telling her that his surprise is feigned. He’s been waiting for her to ask. “What, this? Oh, I--I got married.” There’s something in his voice she can’t quite read, something just a little soft and exposed beneath the confident exterior.

“You got married,” she repeats. She wonders for a moment if it’s a lie, if it’s the latest ploy in what seems to be an ongoing mission to mess with her. That doesn’t quite fit, though, the sincerity in his eyes and the apprehensiveness in her gut telling her that this is real. 

“Her name is Bobbi,” says Clint, rolling the syllables off his tongue like they might be part of a beautiful poem. “She’s a biochem specialist, worked analysis on the drugs in this op, and that’s how I met her. She’s based out of the Vegas field office. Or she was, anyway. Came back here to be with me because, you know, the married thing.”

“So you met her three weeks ago,” Natasha says slowly, trying to put the pieces together in her mind, “and you fell in love and you married her in that time, while also working a S.H.I.E.L.D. op?” She can’t quite keep the skepticism out of her voice. 

“What?” he asks, looking just a little hurt. “Don’t believe in love and marriage?”

Natasha shrugs. “I’ve been married three times, when the assignment called for it.” 

Clint gives her a look. “You eat any of their heads afterward?”

She rolls her eyes. “My codename is Black Widow, not _Praying Mantis_.”

* * *

Natasha has always thought of herself as a survivalist, as someone who beats the odds of staying alive time and again. If she is selfish or jealous or cold-hearted, then it’s because it is required, because it fits her objective of keeping herself around for the next job, or the next challenge. 

“You know,” says Clint, plucking arrows from his latest round of training targets, “I’m pretty damn sure Bobbi’s the smartest woman I’ve ever met.”

“Oh?” Natasha raises an eyebrow, does some quick mental math: they’ve been married for just over eight days.

He nods enthusiastically. “She was telling me this morning about a new project at work. Something with viruses. But not, like, viruses that make you sick? Something about how they’re like little machines, can be used to change other cells, genetically engineer things. No idea what she was talking about, might as well have been another language.” He grins, as though an inability to comprehend his wife’s conversation is somehow a good thing.

“It _is_ another language,” says Natasha, pulling an arrow he’s missed in his distraction and handing it to him. “In its own way.”

Clint’s brow furrows; he’s clearly never considered this before. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that biochemistry is a type of language,” says Natasha, following him toward the locker rooms. “And you don’t understand it because you’ve never been taught. If I spoke only Latin, would you understand me?”

He shrugs. “Nope.”

“Right. Because you’ve never taken the time to learn it. Same thing with you and Bobbi.” She pauses in front of the women’s locker room door, searching his face.

“Huh,” says Clint, but his curiosity lasts for only a moment before the blissed-out grin returns. “I’m pretty sure she’s too smart for me. But she’s _mine_. Amazing cook, too. Pretty much good at everything.”

“What did she make for dinner last night?” asks Natasha, irritation hot in the pit of her stomach, though she can’t quite place why. 

“Tuna noodle casserole,” says Clint.

She snorts, allows herself to fall into the familiar satisfaction of cruelty she rarely turns on him. “You’re right. She’s way too smart for you.”

His smile turns to hurt confusion so quickly that she almost feels guilty.

* * *

There’s a rift between them, afterward. 

Clint still comes to their regularly scheduled training sessions, is still a good sport about sparring with her in the gym and wearing her bruises afterward. He’s decent enough backup when they go into the field; he’s still there to guard her six, she knows that without question. But she misses his usual banter over the comms, much as she’s chided him for it in the past. She misses his habitual invasion of her tables in the mess hall, his invitations to go out to his latest favorite dive bar after work, his maddeningly triumphant smile upon managing to catch her eye in the hallway. He’s slipping away, she thinks, and she isn’t sure whether to blame his newfound happiness or her overzealous barb in the gym. 

When two weeks have passed with no sign of change, Natasha takes the well-worn notebook from under her mattress, searches the pages of her own records for any sort of direction or clue, any sort of angle besides the obvious. There’s nothing, though, and she decides the only way to proceed is by admitting her mistake, testing whether it makes a difference.

She finds him at the range, mechanically sinking arrow after arrow into the row of targets. There’s no art to it today, though, none of conviction she’s accustomed to seeing when he shoots. 

“I’m sorry,” she tells his back, when he’s emptied his quiver for the moment. 

Clint freezes mid-stride toward the targets, turns on his heel to face her with an expression that suggests he’s been unaware of her presence, even more unusual for him than the rest of this display. “You--what?”

“You’re angry at me,” says Natasha, crossing her arms as if the gesture might ward off the vulnerability of those words. “For what I said--about you and Bobbi. I’m sorry.”

“What you--” He blinks at her, then snorts softly. “No offense, Nat, but you are the last thing on my mind right now.” He doesn’t wait for her to respond, just walks quickly down the line of targets, yanking the arrows out in graceless fistfuls and dumping them back into his quiver before heading toward the door.

Natasha blocks his path a moment later, almost too late. “Then what is it about?”

A month ago he would have told her, she thinks, would have made it the latest excuse to get her to socialize. 

Instead he shakes his head and pushes past her. “Don’t feel like talking about it.”

* * *

The next morning, Clint’s chair is conspicuously empty at their weekly briefing. Hill and Coulson choose not to comment, simply pass a knowing look between them, so Natasha opts not to ask. There’s a sick sense of dread in the pit of her stomach, though, as if his unexpected absence has suddenly tilted her world off its axis, her mind in a distracted fog as she makes her report and takes notes on their latest round of assignments. Time ticks by far too slowly, though, her heart pounding the seconds down in her chest.

This is why it’s dangerous, she thinks, becoming too comfortable with a partner. _This_ is why she’d be better off were she still on her own.

Clint is in his office when Natasha goes looking for him. She pauses a few feet off from the cubicle they sometimes share, surprised to have found him so easily. She wonders again if there’s something she doesn’t know here, if he has already left her in a way she has yet to learn. For a moment she considers simply going on about her day, letting him make his own choices and approach her when he sees fit. But there’s something off in the slant of his shoulders, in the way his head is bowed over his work. He’s struggling to stay awake, she thinks, which sends a fresh wave of alarm through her.

She closes the distance between them and rests her hip against the side of his desk. “Decide to take an impromptu honeymoon?”

Clint scrubs a hand over his face before looking up at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Where were you?” asks Natasha, sighing when it’s clear he still doesn’t understand. “You missed the briefing. Don’t worry. I made sure to copy down the homework for you.”

“Fuck,” he breathes, his face finally registering the realization. “It’s Tuesday.”

“Yes.” Natasha meets his eyes carefully. “What did you think?”

“I--” He blows out a breath, leans back in his chair. “I thought it was--I don’t know. My head’s not here.”

“Where is it, then?”

Clint hesitates, but the way his eyes stray to the ring on his left hand tells her all she needs to know. “We had a fight. It was--it was stupid, but--it was a fight.”

Natasha shrugs, tries to school her features to impassivity, reluctant to make another mistake when he’s suddenly so difficult to read. “People fight.”

“Did you know that when two people live together and one of them cooks, the other is obligated to do the dishes?” He sighs, a noise of pure frustration. “I haven’t done the dishes since Bobbi moved in--never did them very often for myself. But last night she ran out of bowls, washed the whole sinkful while I was at the gym, and--I should have thought about it. Should have figured it out, but she never _asked_ and then she was so _disappointed._ Fuck, I hate disappointing people.”

Natasha considers for a moment, isn’t quite sure what he needs from her right now. Finally she decides on action, and holds both hands out to him. “Come on. Let’s go have breakfast.”

He nods once and lets her pull him up, keeping hold of her hands a moment longer than strictly necessary.

* * *

Clint is already there when Natasha arrives in the conference room the following Tuesday. She is habitually fifteen minutes early for their briefings, but Clint usually breezes in the door a few steps ahead of Coulson and Hill, a skill that’s always struck Natasha as equal parts impressive and annoying. Finding him here now is disconcerting, and it fills her with the same strange anxiety she felt at his absence last week. 

It’s been a week of him brooding, a new report of his perceived failures every day, and Natasha braces herself as she sits down beside him, pushes the styrofoam cup of coffee she’s brought toward him. “You’re early.”

He shrugs, takes a sip and exhales a slow, heavy sigh, letting his eyes fall closed for a moment. 

Natasha studies him, realizing with a sick little twist of her gut that she recognizes the smudge on the shoulder of his shirt, saw it happen at lunch the previous day which means he must not have changed since then.

“Did you go home at all last night?” she asks, when another moment passes and he doesn’t volunteer anything.

Clint rests his forearms on the edge of the table and fixes her with a pointed look. “You really want to know?” 

She meets his gaze evenly, wondering if this is some sort of test, if he’s pushing to see whether she will be disappointed too. “You had another fight?”

“She cleaned,” says Clint, the words falling out in a bitter rush once he’s started. “She _cleaned_. Not her stuff. My stuff. My work bench. Threw out all the arrows I’d been meaning to fix. Said she was tired of my junk everywhere.”

Natasha winces sympathetically, knowing he loves his gear above all other possessions. That his wife would miss that fact seems bewildering; then again, their relationship has been a mystery to her from the start. “Did she know?”

“No,” he spits. “Of course she didn’t, because we never talk. She’s always working and I’m always gone. She wasn’t trying to--she’d just had enough. But I lost it. I _lost_ it, Natasha. Punched a wall. I couldn’t--couldn’t go back there last night.”

She swallows, tries to find an appropriate response, torn between offering him comfort or a chance to burn his anger later in the gym. She doesn’t get the chance, though, the door opening to reveal Hill. Clint goes silent.

* * *

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore,” says Clint, on the day Natasha calculates as marking seven weeks of marriage. 

He’s sitting on a bench in the archery range, knees hugged to his chest. He’s changed into the t-shirt and shorts he usually wears for their training sessions, but his feet are bare, and the arrows sitting in a heap beside him aren’t his usual. 

“What?” asks Natasha, sitting beside him and trying to smile, trying to shake off the feeling that she’s drowning, that she’s way out of her element with him now. “Tired of me kicking your ass?”

Clint tries to laugh, but the sound catches in the back of his throat, turns to a noise of pain instead. “I wanted--I wanted to be happy. I wanted to believe I could have _one nice thing_ in my life.”

“But?” she prompts, leaning toward him. 

He shrugs, huffs out another bitter laugh. “But I keep fucking up. Not sure I’m anything she wants, now that the novelty’s worn off.”

“What happened?” asks Natasha, resting a hand on his shoulder. 

“Bobbi’s--” He shakes his head. “She moved here from Vegas, right? And she--she’s biochem. She makes a bundle, way more than I ever will. Living with me is slumming it for her, so she’s been talking about buying a house.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, feeling an instinctive flare of protectiveness for him. “You don’t want to?”

“It’s not that I don’t _want_ to.” Clint takes a shaky breath. “I thought it might help. I was willing to go with it, even if it wasn’t really what I wanted. But this morning she started talking about getting a place with extra bedrooms. You know, for the kids I never knew she wanted to have. I _married_ her and I didn’t realize she wanted that. Can you picture me as a father? I’d--I don’t know, I’d be a disaster. Wash the kids down the drain or something.”

“I am not the person to be giving parenting opinions,” Natasha says gently, though she thinks she agrees with his assessment of his skills. 

“I told her I don’t want that, don’t know if I’ll ever want that, and it was like--It was like the light just went out of everything.” He runs a hand through his hair, swallowing visibly, as though he’s just taken the blow all over again. “I just left. Came here. Forgot my gym shoes, and my damn quiver. I don’t know what to do.”

Natasha follows his line of sight, studies the ceiling with him. For the first time she realizes it is not enough to simply listen, that he is expecting more from her, expecting her to help him with some sort of action. She runs through scenarios in her mind for a moment, suddenly afraid again of losing him, not to indifferent happiness or anger, but to his own misery. She wants to protect him, she thinks, but she isn’t sure whether that means helping him cut ties or preserve his marriage, isn’t even sure she knows how to do the latter. She has always been a destroyer of things, an executioner of relationships.

“Well,” she says, after a long moment, “what you need to be right now is my partner. I _might_ even let you kick _my_ ass for a change, since I’m feeling sorry for you.”

He meets her eyes for an instant, gives her the barest hint of a smile before standing. “Thanks.”

* * *

In the end, Natasha decides she needs more information if she is going to approach this strategically, figure out what Clint truly needs her to be. She’s only been getting one side of the story, she realizes, as she sketches it out on paper, looks again for a pattern. She trusts Clint with her life--still an odd realization in itself--but she can’t count on him to be impartial about his own, and she can’t assume he’ll know how to handle this situation when he’s still trapped in it.

The hallways of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s research and science division feel nothing like the tactical side, cooler and brighter to allow work with the delicate samples housed here. Natasha thinks she probably sticks out like a red flag, her dark uniform stark contrast against all the white coats, but she walks in as though she belongs there and nobody questions her credentials. 

Bobbi Morse is tall, blonde, and intently crouched over a microscope when Natasha finds her lab. She’s also rather conspicuously alone, entrenched in a sort of silence that seems as though it must be haunting at times. She is aware of the intrusion--Natasha can tell by the way the lines of her shoulders shift--but she doesn’t say anything, steadfastly finishes her task before looking up. 

“I take it you’re Agent Romanoff?” she asks, meeting Natasha’s gaze through the thin plastic lenses of protective glasses. “I was wondering when I’d be meeting you.”

“Well,” says Natasha, the corner of her lips pulling upward into a wry smile, “you’re not running the other way yet, so I’ll take that as a good sign.”

Bobbi chuckles at that, and Natasha decides in that moment that she likes her, can see the wit and the warmth that have won Clint over, even through the obvious sharp edge of bitterness. 

“Clint send you to plead his case?”

“No.” Natasha crosses her arms and leans back lightly against the counter, putting on her best show of nonchalance. “I like to make my own judgments about people. You look like you could use a coffee.”

Bobbi considers her for another long moment, then shrugs. “Why not? I have to wait for my samples to cook anyway.”

Natasha doesn’t wait any longer, just leads the way down to the mess hall and pays for two styrofoam cups of the lukewarm liquid S.H.I.E.L.D. considers coffee. It isn’t her ordinary drink of choice, but she figures it’ll do for a gesture of good will, to get this conversation off the ground.

“You know,” says Bobbi, when they’re seated, “sometimes I’ll start a new sequence of experiments, and I’ll know right from the beginning that it’s not going to work out. That’s not the way the scientific method is supposed to work, of course. I’m not supposed to make assumptions. But sometimes, I just _know._ ”

Natasha takes the lid off her coffee, sips it carefully and resists the urge to make a face at the bitterness sliding down her throat. “Am I supposed to ask if this is a metaphor for your marriage?”

Bobbi looks up sharply, the surprise in her eyes telling Natasha that the words have hit their mark, though she wasn’t expecting them so soon. “Am I that obvious?”

Natasha shrugs. “I’m a spy. Reading people is my job.”

Bobbi sighs. “I wanted it to work. I did. But I’m starting to think that I’ve been unrealistic. Okay, not _starting_ to think. Three weeks was way too fast. I married an idea of a man, not someone that I actually knew.”

“And now you’re not sure how to live with the man you’ve discovered?” Natasha prompts. 

“It’s never good,” Bobbi says heavily. “I feel abandoned when he’s working, but he drives me insane when he’s at home. I hate it when he’s thoughtless, but it’s even more infuriating when he tries to fix things. I’m lonely all the time, whether he’s there or not.”

Natasha says nothing to that, just nods once.

“I’m not good at being with another person,” Bobbi admits, finally, blowing ripples into the surface of her coffee. “I’m not good at compromise. I’ve always known how to get what I want, but maybe that’s different from what I need.”

“And what do you want now?” asks Natasha, setting her cup down and leaning forward a little.

Bobbi meets her eyes again reluctantly. “To stop being lonely.”

* * *

Natasha can smell the alcohol on Clint’s breath when he stumbles through her door after midnight. It’s been three days since her conversation with Bobbi, just over two months since they got married, and she knows immediately that things have reached their inevitable end. She doesn’t complain about being disturbed from her sleep, just helps him inside. 

“Bobbi wants a divorce,” he says roughly, without pretense.

Natasha hesitates. “I know.”

Clint doesn’t question that, just barrels straight ahead. “I asked her for another chance. I asked her--I asked--” He swallows hard. “You know how to win people over, Natasha. You know how to make them do things. Tell me how to fix this. Please.”

And there it is, she thinks, the decision she’s been avoiding all along, trying to hedge her bets, trying not to hurt him in the way she knows he needs. She can’t lie, though, she sees finally, wouldn’t be doing either of them a service by prolonging the inevitable. 

“You can’t,” she says finally. “Because it’s not something to be fixed. Neither of you is broken, really. You just don’t fit together.”

“So then it’s just--just done?” he breathes, though the resignation in his face tells her he already knows the answer, that he came to that conclusion long before he showed up on her doorstep looking for a nonexistent miracle. “Fuck.”

“Hey,” she says softly, running a hand along his arm and twining their fingers as she guides him toward her bed with the thought of making him sleep off the alcohol. “I’ve got your back, okay? Just--try to get some rest right now.”

“I’m not taking your bed,” he protests miserably, when he finally seems to register that that’s where she’s been leading him. 

“And I’m not letting you leave until you’ve calmed down and sobered up,” says Natasha, catching him firmly by the arm when he tries to move away, swaying on his feet. “So do what I say and lie down before I decide to knock you out myself.”

The fight goes out of him at that, and he sits heavily, fisting his hands in her shirt to pull her down with him. Natasha lets him, following his momentum onto the edge of the bed and sliding her arms instinctively around his waist as he breaks, finally, his breath hot against her neck as he starts to cry.

* * *

She makes sure to be waiting for him outside the door of his half-empty apartment when he returns from signing the papers a few weeks later. Bobbi’s already shipped her things out, plans to be back in Vegas by morning, she knows, ending things as quickly as they began. 

He’s drunk again when he makes his way up the stairs; she can tell by the unevenness in his gait and the loose swing of his limbs as he moves. 

“Hi,” he breathes, and there’s something in his eyes as he meets her gaze, something that makes her skin feel hot, her instincts just a little unhinged. “She’s gone. Guess I’m starting over now.”

Natasha takes the keys out of his hand as he fumbles with them, unlocks his door and steers him inside, swallowing down the sudden tightness in her own throat at seeing him look so lost. She isn’t sure when she became the one with the even keel, how she began to find herself while watching him become lost. 

“Tell me what you need,” she says softly, resting her hand at the small of his back as if she might be able to anchor him. “Tell me what you need me to be.”

Clint moves in a flash, catching her shoulders and holding on like a man drowning.

“You,” he breathes, his lips hot against the place where her pulse beats in her neck, his hands clutching desperately at the hem of her shirt. “I just--need you. _God,_ Natasha.”

She nods a little frantically, leaning up to kiss him roughly as she pulls his body flush against her own. She wants this, she realizes, the moment a rush of realization so clear and strong that it nearly knocks her off of her feet. She wants to be this--wants to be the salvation he needs right now--for him. But she wants it for herself too, wants him to be safe and loved and _hers_ in a way she has never truly considered before.

* * *

She wakes to the warmth of sun on her face, and the weight of Clint’s gaze on her body. There’s a strange sense of peace in it, she thinks, an unexpected sort of relief in having seen one another utterly bare, having come out the other side. He has always known parts of her that no one else has been allowed, but now she knows some of his secrets too. 

“What do you think?” asks Clint, touching her cheek. There’s a raw vulnerability in his face that reminds her of the sunrise outside the windows, tugs at something nameless in the pit of her stomach. “You and me? We could be good together. We could be more than this.”

Natasha blinks, the question taking her by surprise despite everything. She has been asked a lot of things in her lifetime, has already been a lot of things for a lot of different people. She could say yes, she thinks. Might even _want_ to say yes in the wake of last night, to make him hers in the way she’s been secretly craving all along, unable to admit to herself. But he isn’t ready for that, she thinks, looking around the room at the piles of unfolded laundry, the newly vacant half of the closet. And, more importantly, she isn’t ready either, still exploring the many empty spaces in her life. She could be what he needs, but she still isn’t sure what to be for herself.

Natasha leans over and kisses him very gently on the lips. “No. I’ll be your partner, and I’ll be your friend, but I won’t be more than that. Not now.”

Clint makes a soft noise of surprise at that, but he nods, looking more peaceful than she’s seen him in weeks. “You’re good for me, you know that?”

“No,” she tells him, smiling sadly. “But you can believe that if you need to.”

Minutes later, she steps out into the early morning light, carrying in the back of her mind the fledgling thought that she has done the right thing.


End file.
